I’ve had the 4330 for about a year now. I really haven’t had any problems with it at all. In fact, I’ve been really happy with the planer handling all types and sizes of lumber. Last night I was planing some boards for an end grain cutting board as a Christmas gift. I planed the glued up boards, laid my straight edge across the boards and thought they were flat. i didn’t see any light under the straightedge. I cut the boards into strips and got ready to glue everything up. While dry fitting and checking I noticed a gap in the middle of the board.

I thought maybe I didn’t have enough clamp pressure in the middle so I cranked it down a little more. All of a sudden I had an hourglass shaped cutting board (middle is lower than outside edges). I pulled a piece from the middle and inspected it. After getting out my calipers here’s what I saw:

End

Middle

End

WTF??!!!! Three different measurements?!!! These boards were dead flat and square before glue up. There was a very slight bow after the first glue up which I thought the planer would remove. Did I screw up or do I have a planer problem?

What in the heck do I do with all the pieces now?

Thanks in advance.

Cory

-- The secret to getting ahead is getting started.

14 replies so far

I’m no expert, but it seems to me if you run a slightly bowed board through a planer, with the bow facing the knives, you are going to get exactly what you’ve got…. the center slightly thinner than the edges.

Charlie: Thanks for the reply. I’ve had success in the past flattening a slightly bowed board through the planer by taking very light passes and making sure the board doesn’t rock when it comes in contact with the rollers. That said, I’m confused by the fact that I’ve got three different readings across the glue up.

Another point to consider is that wood isn’t metal. Talking about a difference of 1/100th of an inch or so is pretty much splitting hairs, IMO. You could probably make that much of a difference by applying more or less pressure to the thumbwheel of the caliper.

As most woodworkers tend to be a little on the perfectionist side, which is a good thing, most gift receivers are not. I seriously doubt if the people you are making the cutting board for will even notice or care for that matter that there is a 1/100th difference in the thickness of the cutting board.

Barry and syenefarmer: This is going to be an end grain board and the difference in thickness is on the face grain. So when I go to glue up the pieces they are noticeably thinner in the middle than the edges. The fact that there are a bunch of pieces compounds the problem. If it were in the top/bottom it would be no big deal.

You have probably already glued it up, but if not, I would build a fixture for your Rigid Belt sander so you could run the pieces between the fixture and the belt to end up with strips that were a consistent thickness. (Clamp a piece of 2×4 across the table ~.64” away from the tangent radius on the large drum end of the belt) Running them through cross-grained would get them back the the same thickness again. Although some would argue sanding doesn’t make for a good glue surface – I have never experienced a problem with it….025” wouldn’t be that bad but, as you pointed out, compounded ~20 times and 1/2” is a little more obvious…Maybe give the board a convex radius on the end after final glue-up so it looked more like an optical illusion?? Else, just tell anyone who notices, you were trying to give it little more character… yeah, yeah that’s the ticket!

Quick update: Last night I glued up all the pieces in sections of 4-5 strips. The gap in the middle was easy to eliminate in that small a size with light clamp pressure. This morning I took them out of the clamps to see what I had. There was a small bow in the middle of the pieces. After a general flattening with a handplane, I took each piece to the jointer and ran them through a few times. I was careful to run each mating piece the same number of times and they came out great. They’re very flat and in another glue up for the end grain boards.

The problem, I think, with my planer was the setting for the infeed and outfeed tables. I did a little experiment this morning and noticed that as a board was passing through the infeed and outfeed tables were forcing the ends of the board up. (To eliminate snipe I had raised the ends of the tables.) Apparently, they’re too high and when the board wasn’t fully supported the cutterhead was taking less of a bite from the ends than the middle. I adjusted the table to nearly flat and the thickness was consistent along the board. I guess I’ll have to live with a little snipe.

glad to hear you found the culprit Cory. Sometimes ignorance is bliss – but definitely not in this case.

You may be also able to counter that snipe with a little technique. I personally usually will guide the board on the infeed as it goes in to make sure the rollers don’t ‘pick it up’ and raise it, and same for the outfeed (when it’s shorter boards) which helps with snipe